An Eye On ... Food

Wednesday 19 November 1997 00:02 BST

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Lunch: According to analysis by Mintel, around pounds 2.2bn will be spent on sandwiches this year, which is more than is spent on pizza, pasta and hamburgers put together. The favourite is chicken, which fills 11 per cent of all shop-bought sandwiches, followed by prawn mayonnaise (10 per cent), then egg and BLT (9 per cent each) and cheese (8 per cent). The average price of a sandwich is pounds 1.40.

Dinner: Three men dining at Le Gavroche in London on Monday ended with a bill of pounds 13,091. "It was the best single bill I've seen from a small table in the 26 years I've been working here," said the manager Silvano Giraldin. The food came to around pounds 220, but the wine bill - which included a bottle of 1985 Romanee Conti for pounds 4,950, which they donated to the staff because they though it "a bit young"- added pounds 12,870. The diners were celebrating a birthday.

Nuts: According to an Iranian official, the EU has decided to lift a temporary ban on the import of Iranian pistachio nuts from next month. Pistachios are Iran's largest non-oil export after carpets.